Robin Hood: a Mythic Biography

Robin Hood of Hollywood 4 151 they re-created the outlaw in terms of contemporary activities and lib- erties, from imperial military adventures to the inter-male delights of rural, and sometimes cruel, sport. That fruitll flexibility and the related low profile of the Robin Hood texts changed in the twentieth century, as one medium became dominant and provided several technically powerful and highly pop- Robin Hood of Hollywood ular re-creations of Robin Hood's story. Each of these tended to dom- inate the following versions and to pressure them into being either pale copies or deliberate, and sometimes forced, rejections of the dominant contemporary image- of the hero. The newly potent medium, was, of course, film, and then ia jUn- ior relative, television. In these, a new and authoritative image of the hero was created, drawing on the earlier versions but clearly different in a number of ways- Less aggressive than the social bandit, more active than the displaced lord, more leadedy than the rural esquire, Robin Hood of Hollywood strides, smiles, leaps on and horse, brandishes his bow, speaks with large gestures and noble sentiments, and always, unlike both the social bandit and the distressed gentle- The htlaw on Screen man, dominates the scene endrely. Addressing his men from on high, swinging though the air to menace the Normans, taunting his ene- ' mies from a battlement, standing with arrow ominously poised, he is A Visual Image a theatrical figure, but one that the magic of cinema make, in one swift cut, both potent at a distance and intimately exciting in close-up. B~ the end of the century Robin Hood, now at least five Robin Hood of Hollywood is an action hero. &'hat in the novels hundred years old, had taken many identities relating to the periods,.' was a matter of lengthy explanations of sieges and battles--scenes . ,d genres in which he had appeared. But whether he that only a skillful novelist like Scott could realize with real excite- bold yeoman, rueful lord, or rural gentleman, he had not so far been . ment-is in film a matter of images of speed and thrill. What in the hefom of a major work of art. Each version of the outlaw hero had plays is a slow-moving exchange of feeling, which ,ived at least one solid, lucid, and sunriving re~resent~~~~~,bu work well if the writing is poetical enough-as Munday's is o-ionally there no to enshrine and to transmit the meaning as Ten- n~son'sis very rarely-in fdm is a tender two-shot, symbolic the hero, no Robin Hood equivalent of Malov's Le Dx*h Id@ of the King. Though that reduced cul foli%e, emotive music, and appropriately low lighting. Film can wm- or T~~~~~~~~~ bine the two aspects of Robin, not only an active mm, a fighter, a profile might suit the idea of an outlaw, eluding the firi~of great leader of men but also gentle and understanding in personal relations ,much as he constraints of a sheriff and his jail, it with the poor, with his male friends, with Marian. Film, curiously, the tradition all the more flexible and mo helped to laborates and fulfills the implications of the very early ballads, ,, something as ironic and insubstantial as Peacock's Ma also operate by cut, montage, change of focus, by suggestive ian for nineteenth-century writers the most authoritative available, they felt all the more free to let their imaginations rather than novel-like elaboration. It is no accident that the 152 + Chapter 4 I Robin Hood of Hollywood + and features that are romantically exciting: as well as Fairbanks and best comparison with the Gest is with the major films of the twenti- Flynn, John Derek, who starred in the fairly unexciting Row of eth century, nor that a remarkable resemblance exists between the Sbwood Forest of 1950, and Patrick Bergin, of the 1991 Robin Hood, early and broadside ballads and the pacing and impact of a television both have classic matinee-idol looks, while Michael Praed, who series: each takes little time to experience, each deals with a few in- stirred many a heart with the 1984 television Robin ofSherwood offers terlocking scenes, and each focuses on one aspect of the hero's iden- the most dramatic profiIe of dl. tity and his relation with a few other characters. the body of the sexualized Robin speaks directly to the au- Modern film and ancient ballad are both performance genres, de- Whik dience, the plot of the films usually celebrates the gendered triangle voted to telling a story to a substantial and wide-ranging audience. story, both heterosexual and homosocial, which had developed in the They do not expect the close attention of the novel-reader or the play- nineteenth century and was passed on from the theatrical tradition. goer; they need to seize and to keep attention to transmit meaning As Kevin Ha.indicates,' at least three of the seven pmgrq Robin through rapid movement and broad strokes, both by the hero and the Hood films had this story in some form. The 1912 Robin Hood made artist. But what in ballad would have been added by voice, gestures, by Edair has a Smith-de Koven based story about Guy of Gisborne's and probably by additional music fiom the performer, in film is cre- determination to marry Marian, which leads to his capturing Robin; ated by various techniques-color, camera work, design, music, and getting tied to a tree is the interestingly phallic mode of capture (as the engaging presence of the actors. well as a cowboy motif), and that is how Guy himself ends up. The The Robin of the twentieth century was re-created in film, and ;, 1913 Robin Hood by American Standard has a triangle based on Will though Britain made a significant contribution, the outlaw focus Scarlet and Christabel, daughter of the sheriff; her name seems to de- moved from Sherwood to Hollywood. At the same time, Robin's scend fiom Egan. The British and Colonial Films Robin Hood Out- name changed, subtly but decisively. While British people still call hwed of 1912 has Robin rescue Marian "from an evil knight,'' as him Robin Hood, two words with equal stress, to North Americans Harty's synopsis puts it (455). In the Fairbanks film the rival is Guy, he is Robinhood, with a firm stress on the first syllable: the metrics of played as a silent villain with black-rimmed eyes, lurching from vio- the new name are the same as those of Hollywood itself. - lent threat to craven defeat. Though this film gives no suggestion that More dramatic and memorable changes than that have come Guy and Robin have a dose relationship mediated by Marian, the upon the hero-in film. His body is now a central feature. Whereas the 1938 film depicts Sir Guy as an attractive alternative hero. As Sir Guy, tights were originally deployed so that nineteenth-century actresses Basil Rathbone is a villain with an admirable military stance, espe- playing Robin could show their legs, the male body became the focus cially compared with the cowardly sheriff. Guy finally fights Robin of display in the early films. In the 1922 film Douglas Fairbanks rep- Hood as an equal in a classic sword fight, which even involves near- resents Robin Hood at first as a heavily armed, fully dressed noble- embracing between the two well-matched males; the scene illustrates man. But after he returns from crusade and is outlawed, his body is the feeling "between men" that Eve Kosofsk Sedgurck has outlined liberated from the stiff concealments of robes and armor, and he (see p. 128). The triangle's secondary, male-bonding, force--or per- wean an acrobat's revealing costume to match his darting leaps, . haps in this and some other cases its primary force-recurs vividly in slides, and triumphant salutes. Wlth Fairbanks the protruding chest the television series Ro6in of Sberwood in which both the sheriff and is as important as the legs and arms, but with Errol Flynn in The Ad- Guy of disborne are depicted as inherently gay. Both have a pro- ventures of Robin Hood (1938) repeated emphasis is on powerfd nounced interest in the conspicuously handsome Robin; only the thighs, whether gripping his horse, poised suggestively close to Mar- sheriffs lumpish and clearly undersexed brother, the abbot, has any ian, or pldin direct, and sexually challenging, opposition to Princc interest in Marian, and that is merely for her money. John. Cinema and television have always selected men with figure A 156 + Chapter 4 Robin Hood of Ho11pood + 157 relationships as well as achievements-the archetypd Holl~ood men to a tournament and off on crusade are 111 pan grandiose rnan--is realized in those structures. -1~ cinema that was very much connected with, and creative B~~ the twentieth-centuv filmic Robin has an idenuty wider 06 the myrh of Hollywood. From D. W. Griffih to C. B, de ~d~, than his attractive body and his sociosexud interactions; as in earlier and with Fairbankis Robin Hood marking an important stage along versions his inherent resistance to some form of authori~always gives the fib realized the new American sense of power and splendor: his role a kind of political meaning. This varies considerably but in he atle had been renewed only because it had ((like many red a- generd,-harts an rnpanding role for the hero, so that twentieth- des) crossed the Atlantic. antury Robin Hood of Hollysmod becomes a politid figure with : But this splendor was not simple, either in its nature or its direc- ~n-rns broader than the 10~~11and regional significanceof the tion.

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